June 24 is the date for five countries, with few more in July, and by September, 88 countries will have it. So, worst case scenario, Singapore telcos will launch iPhone 4 in September, best case in July.

Price wise, the current price may stay, that is with $38/month plan, you’re looking at S$538 for 16GB version and S$668 for 32GB version.

The person showed me a column that he said containing the page size that I accessed (in Excel). We summed up that column, came out 226000, which according to him was in KB. 226,000 KB is close to 237 MB shown in my bill. Fair enough.

I asked the person to sort based on that column. The largest page I accessed was in http://m.google.com/ domain. The size column showed around 14000. I’m sure that column was in bytes, therefore the page size was about 14KB. The person insisted it was in KB, making that page size 14MB!! We’re talking about 1000 times difference here.

Singapore Rain Locations

Scroll up a few lines, we could see this line: http://www.nea.gov.sg/cms/mss/gif/rainloc0.gif (shown above) amounted to 8579 in size. It makes perfect sense that it’s 8579 bytes, therefore 8.5KB. The person, again, still insists it’s 8.5MB!! Now, try loading that image in your browser, right click, look at its properties, and tell me how on earth that image can be 8.5MB? Even the photos from my digital camera were only half of that size. Moreover I said, if I could load that image in my phone in 2 seconds, does that mean Starhub network speed can go 4.25MB/sec? Heck, even my broadband at home can’t do that.

The person continued to give lame answers that would be passable to other non-IT-savvy users, but I eat bytes, KB, and MB for lunch, I know the differences. The person probably gave up trying to convince me with those lame answers, he promised to call me back later. I went back to my office, and about 6.30pm, he called me again, saying that he has checked and confirmed with the IT department, it was in KB, to which I replied “Check again, and call me back after you get more reasonable answer.”

About 8pm, he called me again, he told me, he has tried to load NEA website, clocking up 100KB from loading the page, and would need to get a few pages before he can hit the page where I could get that image. Well, I replied: “First, I bookmarked that image, so I don’t need to go through few pages to see if it’s raining in Singapore or not. Second, if the home page was 100KB, in order to hit 8.5MB, I would have need to visit 85 pages just to know if it’s raining or not??!!”

He gave up and offered to waive all the extra data charges this month, and will monitor again for my next bill. Good. Unless you can prove how I clocked up 237MB in a month when I have used less than 10MB each month for the past year, you should not try to charge enormous phone bill. Yeah, I know there’s a cap at $36, but still, that extra $30 is enough for my 6 months subscriptions. I’m not letting go easily, especially knowing that Starhub log file didn’t show that I did anything extra (like Youtube) in that month.

To be fair to that guy who helped me, besides the lame excuses, he actually did a good job, trying to cover up what I think was an accounting mistake on Starhub part.

Tonight, I came home, surprised to see a tweet from Starhub, offering help to check for me. I’m surprised to know that Starhub actually checks Twitter and address issues of its customers who complains in Twitter. Excellent job I would say. That Starhub Twitter account was created in 15 Feb 2009, so I think they’re only starting to use this popular online medium to reach out to customers.

Tweet from Starhub

My phone bill charges record so far was around $130, and that’s when I went overseas and uses did some roaming. With that in mind, I was shocked when I received this bill from Starhub today. $729.63 total data usage? What the heck did I do in two weeks so use up so much? I was in Indonesia for the other two weeks.

So, last week I called Starhub to ask for the details, and this afternoon, a lady from Starhub called me to tell me that she has checked with their IT department and confirmed I really have used that much. Puzzling. Especially if the counter on my phone shows only 8MB of usage.

I’m going to drop by Starhub tomorrow to get the details, see if I can spot something “strange” with my data usage.

That made me realize, in this time and age, when people are so dependent on storing contact numbers in their phone, it is more important than ever that our connection with friends should not be severed by a single point of failure, our phone. People should be backing up their contacts somewhere else, such that when disaster strikes their phone (fingers crossed don’t happen), it should be a simple task of restoring their latest contacts, rather than trying to ask their friends one-by-one via email or facebook for their contact numbers.

I periodically (as much as daily, or a few times a week) syncs my contacts, calendars, and tasks from my Nokia E90 to Mac’s iCal and Address Book via iSync. Sync-ing is done via Bluetooth, so I just need to have my phone within 5-7 metres of my Macbook, launch iSync, and click on “Sync Devices”. As simple as that. Calendar entries from iCal are then synced in the background to Google Calendar. I don’t sync any contacts to online services. Maybe I should, but in the mean time, I trust Time Machine backup that keeps me safe up to the last hour of my data. Good enough for me.

There are TONS of online services, most of them are free, that allows you to sync your contacts (and possibly calendars) from your phone to that online service. Check out Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Calendar for you Microsoft and MSN users out there or Google Sync for Gmail fans.

Do you backup the data in your phone? How, and where?

For someone who uses Google Docs and Spreadsheets for storing documents and collaboration with friends, the ability to finally be able to edit them on the phone is a great  news.

Until today, I’ve only been able to view documents and spreadsheets, and I have to wait until I get to a desktop or laptop in order to edit them.

To check out these new capabilities, just go to http://m.google.com/docs in your mobile browser and log in. If you are like me who uses Google Apps, I go to http://docs.google.com/a/hendrikch.com.

Available for Android, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Symbian S60 (high-end Nokia) phones.

I did a checkpoint half-way through this year back in May, and up to that point, I’ve already spent S$2,500. Move forward to end of year today, that number has ballooned up to S$4,167. Singaporean says *jialat liao*

Looking back, I’m not sure I could have spent much less than what was needed. I’ll run through them from the most expensive ones, and you tell me if I’ve bought more than I should?

Apple Macbook (white)
Committed at S$1,400 for 30 months installment, I’ve paid 9 months of S$46.67 each for a total of S$420 this year. Twenty-one more months to go. So far, this laptop was the one that made me switched to Mac, and it has been a useful laptop as I travelled around the globe this year. Along the months, I have upgraded the RAM from 1GB to 4GB for about S$55, “accidentally” upgraded the HDD from 120GB to 320GB for S$95, and bought Applecare for S$200 (from S$446 retail price) to extend its warranty cover until 2011.

Compaq Presario V3638
Bought this for my mum. The original price was S$999, but after adding RAM upgrade, minus GST claim, etc., I ended up with S$1,108.95.

Canon Digital IXUS 860IS
In need of a digital camera for my USA trip in September, I bought this one for S$519, complete with all goodies I need. I added $70 for an extra original Canon battery.

Apple iPod Nano 4G – 8GB
Apple store in Singapore is selling this for S$248, but Apple store in New York was selling for US$149. With USD-SGD exchange rate as low as 1.40 back then, it was cheaper to buy in New York.

Western Digital My Passport 320GB
As my Macbook 120GB storage wouldn’t be enough to store and backup photos and videos taken during USA trip, this external hard drive is the cheapest and easiest way to have more storage on the road. Got it for S$149.

Logitech v470 Bluetooth mouse
This excellent mouse retails for S$85 and after all these months, the last time I checked last week, some shops are still selling it for S$89. I got two of these from eBay for a total of S$85, so you’d consider I got 50% discount. I uses one, and my mum is using the other one. The pair of battery I put in since August are still working as of today. Amazing battery life.

Starhub re-contract
This time, I decided not to change my phone during re-contract. Instead, I simply recontract, and sold the new phone off for a S$362 profit. Pretty good.

Miscellaneous
There are other sub-$50 stuffs like web-cam for my mum, USB hub, earphone, etc.

What do you think? Could I have spent any less this year? How?

Destinations have all be planned, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, New York, Washington DC, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Montreal, and Taipei. Although I will be travelling for a total 25 days, but the schedule is pretty packed. If you want more details on this trip, read on.

I booked a tour from Nam Ho Singapore for S$2,388 that includes return trip Singapore – Los Angeles and 10-day west coast tour (LA, Vegas, SF, Grand Canyon, Universal Studios Hollywood and Disneyland). One thing I like about their service is customisation. I asked some travel agents, and they told me I have to stick to their travel schedule and itineraries, no change allowed (I’m not paid commission by Nam Ho btw to say this hehe…). I asked for this 10-day tour, then change my return trip from New York instead. The top-up is S$450, fair enough. They’ve also arranged a domestic flight from Los Angeles – New York for S$439, which is slightly cheaper than what I can get in retail sellers like Zuji. Add S$795 for airport taxes, fuel surcharges, etc. and you end up with S$4,072 per person.

That S$4,072 will bring me to LA, Vegas, SF, and around, then flight to NY and back to Singapore. Everything from the moment I reached NY are all free-and-easy. At the moment, New York, Washington DC, Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Montreal are in the plan, but they can always change depending on situations when I reach there. Maybe I should add Wall St. to my schedule as well to see Barclays new-office-to-be at Lehman Brothers.

Temperature will be pretty okay, dropping as low as 5°C for cities that are closer to the north like San Francisco, Toronto, and Montreal, but in cities like New York or Los Angeles, they only dropped as far as 15°C. Taipei’s weather is exactly the same as Singapore, so no worries there.

Preparation are pretty much done at the moment, I have packed enough attires, shorts, jeans, jackets, and sweaters. I even bring one formal attire with tie should I need them in Las Vegas casinos. Gadgets are plenty in this trip. My parents (oh yeah, did I say I’m going there with my parents? US Embassy in Melbourne rejected my brother’s US Visa application, so he can’t go ) will bring a video cam and Panasonic Lumix FX8 digital camera, I will bring my Macbook (I’m sure will need my Macbook a lot in this trip), a 320GB portable hard disk (I’m not scared of how many photos will be taken, I’m scared of videos to be taken that could go 4GB/day if our last trip to Australia is any indicator), Canon IXUS 860IS digital camera, Nokia E90 mobile phone, iPod, and all kinds of chargers, batteries, cards, company and banking tokens, etc.

Free wireless Internet access are pretty much guaranteed in US hotels, so I can keep myself connected (to upload photos no less, and update blog), yay !!! I hope to be able to keep up a journal/diary/blog whatever-you-call-it for my trip as soon as I get to hotel, fingers crossed I can do that.

Meanwhile, take care everyone.

The largest screen in our house is none other than our TV at 21″, followed by three LCD monitors: Eko’s 19″, my 17″, and Dian’s 15″. Going further down the screen sizes are our laptops. I used to have 14″ very old seven-year-old Dell laptop (it’s in Jakarta now with my dad), my latest Macbook with 13.3″, Dian’s IBM Thinkpad X series with 12.1″, and finally Eko latest acquisition Acer netbook at 8.9″.

Smaller than those, we have to look at our portables. Eko and I have Dell Axim X51v with 3.5″ screen, my Canon IXUS 860IS has 3″, and Eko’s Canon EOS400D has 2.5″.
For our main phones, my Nokia E90 has 4″ internal screen and 2″ external screen, Eko’s HTC Touch has 2.8″, Dian has E71 with 2.4″. Each of us also have a second phone with much smaller screens, around 2″-type.

What’s interesting, with Dell Axim being the exception, each of us owns unique screen sizes, and three of us covered all kinds of screen sizes from 21″, 19″, 17″, 15″, 14″, 13″, 12″, 9″, all the way to < 5″ screen sizes.
Also, each of us in the house has exactly ONE desktop with ONE LCD monitor, ONE laptop (or netbook), and TWO phones. Our house has very busy occupants

In the mean time, SingTel has officially announce the price plan as well.

Although $56 plan is pretty steep, but the price plan of iFlexi Value are not too bad actually to have 1GB of monthly data (that should be enough for mobile browsing, unless you stream YouTube video everyday on the road, then 1GB will not be enough).

The bad news is, unlike Starhub that cap data usage at $36 a month, SingTel doesn’t, so you can possibly paying hundreds of dollars for your data plan if you’re not careful.

The second bad news is, in order to enjoy that FREE 1GB local data, you have to signup before 5th September 2008, that’s like two weeks after it will be launched this Friday. But then, with COMEX coming along next week, expect LOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG QUEUE at Suntec City when people will queue for iPhone.

Wait a minute, maybe that’s actually a good news. With LOTS of people busy queuing for the iPhone, the rest of Suntec City will be empty for me to roam around, *fat hope*